"
How elevated the turn of this passage! To be at once luxuriant and
feeble, and to lose one's way till we get into a passion, (with our
guide, I suppose) is peculiar to a poetic subject. It is impossible to
mistake this for prose. Then how pathetic the conclusion! What hard
heart can refuse its compassion to personages _abused_ by a _dream_, and
that dream the _dream of a History!_
Oh, wonderful poet, thou shalt be immortal, if my eulogiums can make
thee so! To thee thine own rhyme shall never be applied, (_Dii, avertite
omen_).
"Already, pierc'd by freedom's searching rays,
The waxen fabric of his fame decays!"
ARTICLE VII.
INKLE AND YARICO, A POEM, BY JAMES BEATTIE, L.L.D. 4TO.
This author cannot certainly be compared with Mr. Hayley.
We know not by what fatality Dr. Beattie has acquired the highest
reputation as a philosopher, while his poetry, though acknowledged to be
pleasing, is comparatively little thought on. It must always be with
regret and diffidence, that we dissent from the general verdict. We
should however be somewhat apprehensive of sacrificing the character we
have assumed, did we fail to confess that his philosophy has always
appeared to us at once superficial and confused, feeble and
presumptuous.
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